Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 91

What is the future of the fairy-faith? Like so many aspects of the Celtic world, it is an endangered thing, thanks to the march of secular beliefs and the mass media into every corner of rural life. Today it seems that more upper-middle-class new age consumers are likely to believe in the fairies than their rural forebears. And whde the Irish farmers of old basically tried to keep from running afoul of the gentry, our postmodern shamans eagerly seek to contact them through guided meditations and trance journeys. That may not be such a bad thing, especially if it leads to a greater sense of the dependence that humankind has on the environment. But it’s a new chapter in the world of the fairies. Just as the Tuatha Dé Danann went underground and Celtic paganism changed forever, so now as the fairies are transformed from fearsome metaphors of the chaos in nature to charming spirit guides and purveyors of subjective wisdom, a transformation is happening from which there can be no return.